Edge computing demystified !

As Enterprises look to embrace Digital Transformation, there is a compelling need for Edge computing solutions to enable business and machine critical applications.

By 2025, a significant majority of enterprise-generated data will be created and processed outside the data center or cloud.

As decision making moves closer to device endpoints, compute and processing power will shift from the core/cloud to the Edge.

Edge computing can be defined as a distributed paradigm that includes deployment of application, compute, storage, and other relevant capabilities outside of centralized data centers or Public Clouds. Edge computing solution enables processing of data closer to the location where it is generated, consumed. Edge enables clients to improve response times, save bandwidth and enhance the overall security & compliance posture

According to some leading analysts (including Gartner), Edge computing is entering the mainstream as organizations look to extend cloud to on-premises and to take advantage of IoT and transformational digital business applications. Industry leaders must incorporate edge computing into their cloud computing plans as a foundation for new application types over the long term. 

Key Drivers and Trends leading to adoption of Edge computing 

1. Growing adoption of IoT across all industries. There will be an estimated 50 billion “things” connected to the internet by 2025 according to leading analysts.
2. Growing data volumes. The increase in connected things would result in a massive data surge. According to industry analysts, data volumes generated would be more than 200 zettabytes.
3. Growing demand for low latency processing and real-time automated decision-making capabilities for multidimensional experiences (e.g., remote/robotic surgery, autonomous vehicles, etc.).
4. Growing usage of cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) and highly automated infrastructures.
5. Convergence of IT and OT. There would be a phenomenal growth in the number of new operational processes deployed on the edge infrastructure, leading to the convergence of OT & IT. This would result in an increase in adoption of Edge computing solutions across the industries.

Key Tenets of an e2e Edge computing solution

1. Defining the ‘edges and Intelligence distribution considerations — With organizations having the flexibility of deploying workloads at various parts of the network, a key challenge is to find the optimum placement of data and compute on the distributed network and to define the various edges on the network. 
2. Network architecture design — Organizations usually consider edge computing when they have specific requirements related to data download rates, low latency requirements, or the need to process large volumes of data. In such cases, the overall network architecture topology must be carefully designed, which takes into consideration factors such as the number of hops, path diversity, geographical considerations for various edge layers, traffic differentiation, and prioritization, and so on.
3. Security, Compliance, and Privacy — With increased data movement and the flexibility to place data outside the central cloud at varying locations on the distributed network, organizations will have to contend with the resulting security, regulatory and other compliance issues. This is especially true for data related to healthcare, governments, financials, and other such sensitive data. 
4. Infrastructure Management and Automation — With thousands of edge sites connecting even more users and IoT devices and endpoints, automation becomes almost essential to help manage and orchestrate various elements of this architecture. This modernization may involve a shift to Hyper-converged Infrastructures (HCI) in Core and Edge Data Centers, use of AI-enabled automation, and related technologies to help them orchestrate workloads and process data emanating from the edge devices and nodes.
5. Design, Development, and Deployment of Edge Applications — When developing edge workloads and environments, enterprises and cloud providers usually extend their cloud services to the edges. These services include but are not limited to security, software development services, and other IaaS services. 

Edge computing would continue to be one of the top transformative technologies for next few years. It would be interesting to see how this area shapes up over the next few years.

Looking forward to your comments and suggestions on how Edge computing would bring in a paradigm shift in adoption of digital transformation across the organizations.